


For the Odds Were Never in Their Favour

by QuillerQueen



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Inspired by The Hunger Games, oq au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-14
Updated: 2020-04-14
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:27:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23656099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuillerQueen/pseuds/QuillerQueen
Summary: A short piece inspired by The Hunger Games, for OQ Book Week 2020. Let's just assume the tributes don't need to be a boy and girl pair.
Relationships: Evil Queen | Regina Mills/Robin Hood
Comments: 7
Kudos: 9
Collections: OQ Book Week





	For the Odds Were Never in Their Favour

His boy had been taken a mere week ago, and now here he was, reduced to a colourful blotch on Robin's cracked screen. The image of him was so close Robin could reach out and touch it--and he did sometimes, caressing the lifeless pixels that didn't come anywhere near his precious Roland. Roland--far away, trapped in a deadly arena somewhere at the Capitol, fighting for his life…

For a handful of people's entertainment.

For the rest of Panem, a reminder of their place.

Because the Hunger Games were no celebration of peace but instead a heartless ploy to strike fear into the district-dwellers' hearts.

Well, Robin wasn't having any of that. For years he'd been building a resistance, one by one, slowly, to avoid approaching the wrong recruit and thus dooming the cause and everyone associated with it. The Peacekeepers knew, but they couldn't ever prove anything.

They still found ways to retaliate. The latest Reaping was one of them. Roland's becoming tribute was no mere case of the odds not being in his favour. It was punishment for Robin's subversive activities. They struck where it hurt most.

But the blow only cemented Robin's resolve.

He clutched his bow when the door creaked, notched an arrow just as she stepped inside.

"I want to join," she said.

Regina Mills.

Raised in the Capitol, fallen from grace when she dared fall in love with a poor stable boy and follow him here. The district never accepted her as one of their own, and in time she stopped trying to fit in. She was bold and blunt, always ready with a sharp retort. He'd tried to recruit her once, only to be called smug, and reckless, and all manner of other choice words. 

"I want to join," she said, eyes hard and lips pursed.

Her boy had been taken, too.

Her eyes, hollow and red-rimmed, burned with the same fire consuming him.

The time had come. They were but a few, but perhaps they could yet rouse many. Together, they would defy the damn odds— and perhaps, he thought as their eyes locked in a moment of unspoken kinship--perhaps they could beat them, too.


End file.
